We snuck out of our cheeky camp-site at the earliest moment of daylight and continued along the well maintained bike path until, about 5 Kms later, it ended abruptly and we were forced onto the main road with little-to-no siding for us to cycle on. As the cars whizzed past us on our left, on our right was beautiful Italian coastline of the Riviera di Ponente region. It’s a mixed up area with steep cliffs that drop off into the Mediterranean separating flat areas of coastline where small towns have popped-up to support the summer-time rush of tourists, but this was winter. The summer-time tourists of youthful people and families have been replaced by octogenarians sitting on the seaside benches getting their twelve minutes of sun chatting about who won cards last night. Many of the shuffling characters stopped, stared, and muttered a few words to themselves as they past our bikes leaned up against sea-wall, but they dared not talk to us like they might catch a disease. Maybe it was because we had commandeered one of the precious seats in the sun to eat our breakfast or maybe it was just because they’re old! None-the-less, we enjoyed the beauty of the region. In each cove was a town, a little piece of magic squished in-between hills that pushed out into the sea.

As we peddled on we were starting to realise that we weren’t going to reach our target of Imperia. We stopped for another brilliant Italian espresso to chat about our options. We got talking to the waitress, Flavia, who confirmed that Imperia was too far away from our current location in Savona. The coffee stop turned into a beer stop and we dropped the idea of getting all the way to Imperia. With very little hope at finding a camp-site that was actually open we looked for another area to set up our tent, but the coast-line was sheer cliff. With some amazing luck we ran into a caravan park that promised a shower and a warm bed. We cooked some food, charged our necessary items and got to bed.